ttenuation. Those who could not provide for themselves, had
nothing to feed on but a scanty charity-allowance from the benevolence
of individuals, which, when distributed among the whole, furnished
each with sometimes only a few peas in the day; and at intervals of
several days, an ounce and a half of meat. 'When the miserable
wretch,' say the committee in their report, 'hath worn out the charity
of his friends, and consumed the money which he hath raised upon his
clothes and bedding, and hath ate his last allowance of provisions,
he usually in a few days grows weak for want of food, with the
symptoms of a hectic fever; and when he is no longer able to stand, if
he can raise 3d. a day to pay the fee of the common nurse of the
prison, he obtains the liberty of being carried into the sick-ward,
and lingers on for about a month or two, by the assistance of the
above-mentioned prison portion of provision, and then dies.' The
committee made more lifelike this horrible description of the state of
the prison by describing the results of their efforts to relieve the
sufferers. They said: 'On the giving food to these poor
wretches--though it was done with the utmost caution, they being only
allowed the smallest quantities, and that of liquid nourishment--one
died; the vessels of his stomach were so disordered and contracted for
want of use, that they were totally incapable of performing their
office, and the unhappy creature perished about the time of
digestion.' These prisoners were debtors, not criminals. We make our
extracts from the reports, just after having heard in a scientific
society an examination of the dietary of a large district of prisons.
The difficulty appeared to be, to find the medium that would preserve
health without making the criminal's living in some measure luxurious;
and it appeared that, by almost every dietary in actual use in the
district, the prisoners fattened; in fact, they profited so much in
constitution by sobriety, good air, and regular food, however simple,
that it was found a difficult matter to give them what might be
considered a bare sufficiency, without raising their physical
condition, and sending them out of prison with improved constitutions.
So different is imprisonment for crime in the present age, from
imprisonment for debt a hundred and twenty years ago.

The condition of many of the prisoners for debt in England, though few
knew the actual extent of its horrors, was well known to